Module Description:
Ubiquity Extended Team member Andre Neumann-Loreck shares how startup CEOs and executives can ensure they scale as the startup scales (vs. management by trial & error) -including the benefits, the right time to engage, the time involved, and the cost.
Full Transcript:
Welcome everyone to our Ubiquity University session to understand, When Does CEO Coaching Make Sense? Ubiquity University is a pre-seed and seed stage venture capital firm investing in entrepreneurs moving software beyond the screen of computers and smartphones into the real physical world. Today, we're lucky to have Ubiquity Extended Team member Andre Neumann-Loreck to talk us through when CEO coaching makes sense. Please take over, Andre.
Perfect. Sunil, thanks so much for that introduction and for this opportunity to participate in Ubiquity University and to talk about executive coaching. I like to start this way. You may be hiring for your company and as you're hiring, you're looking to hire the right person for the job right now. You may be thinking that some of the people that you're hiring may not scale with your company. They might be right for the job now, but maybe not when the company is 50 people or 100 or 1,000. If they don't scale with the company, you'll have to hire them a boss. My question is, what if you yourself are one of those people? And the point is, that does not have to be the outcome.
So I'd like to start with a little background on coaching. Executive coaching used to be reserved for business elites. They got the coaching because it was essential for their companies that they had the tools and the skills to perform at the highest levels. I wanna illustrate that with a story. At one time, I worked for a company that was a supplier to Apple. Our hard dis drives went into Apple computers. One day, one of our executives went to Apple for a big meeting with Steve Jobs and members of his leadership team. And when he came back, one of the things he told us was that every member of the Apple executive team in the meeting had an executive coach with them in the room. They were in the room sitting in the back lined up against the wall. And when I heard that, I thought, wow, that is amazing. That is an incredible investment in those people and in the future of that company. And why not? Why not make that investment? You know, because the business schools that have studied this have shown that executive coaching improves performance in a material way.
One particular type of coaching has been proven to increase individual performance, team performance. It improves a job satisfaction not only for the person being coached, but also for the people working for that person. And it improves retention of the people working for the person who's being coached. It improves team cohesiveness. And this is leadership versatility training. What is leadership versatility training? An MIT publication wrote it up this way. "Versatile leaders are able to continually adjust their behavior, deftly applying the right approach to the right degree, to the circumstances at hand." So for all of these reasons, my firm, On Tap Consulting, has adopted versatility as an important element of our coaching practice. In the absence of versatile leadership, how do people, how do executives deal with difficult situations, potentially new situations that come up? Some people get it just right, but it turns out that most of us default to a narrow set of behaviors that we learned early in our career. And some of those behaviors are gonna be good and appropriate, some will be less good.
At an executive level, we know that in many instances, those behaviors are not optimal because, well, we all have room to grow and improve, and we have room to increase our leadership capacity as we rise. Another way that executives might deal with new and different situations that come up is to just try something new, right? If they're not stuck in the rut of their old behaviors, maybe they'll try a new set of behaviors to deal with this new situation. And that may have worked well for them when they were managers, but we think that's a terrible approach for an executive to take. It amounts to management by trial and error. And the the risks and consequences are too great. If you're, you know, managing your investors, or building a team, or dealing with an existential threat, you don't wanna be relying on trial and error. So I'll say more about versatile leadership and when to engage with an executive coach. I wanna start though by mentioning my first experience coaching. The first time was playing soccer in high school. I had a great coach. And for those of you who played sports, maybe you've had a similar experience where you've been able to see how powerful and potentially life-changing it is to work with a great coach.
My first experience with an executive coach came when I was bucking to become a VP. So I was a senior director at a mid-sized company that was growing really quickly. It soon became a Fortune 500 company and I wanted to make VP. I talked to my boss about it often. I think I must have been a pain in the ass because I would talk to him and also I would go to our CEO every six months and say, "What do I need to do to become VP?" And they would give me projects to work on and skills to improve in. And six months later, I'd be back and say, "What do I need to work on now?" On of those cycles, the CEO said, "I've got good news for you. In roughly six months, you're gonna get promoted, but what we're gonna do right now is make an investment in you and we're gonna show our commitment to you by giving you an executive coach to work with. So, you know, what would your reaction be to that?" My reaction was I was thrilled. I was overjoyed because I knew this executive coach and I knew that in my company, every person that got promoted to VP got to work with this coach as part of the promotion package. Every VP that got hired into the company from the outside got to work with this executive coach. So I was thrilled to work with this coach, and he did not disappoint. I learned a ton. I became more self-aware about my own management style and its strengths and inherent weaknesses. I started to realize the different decision-making styles that executive have and how mine differed from my bosses. I learned more about how people are motivated and then use that to create greater alignment and teamwork on my staff. So for me, it was phenomenal. And that's why I'm really excited now to be evangelizing executive coaching.
When is the right time? The right time is when you're ready to change and grow. So this is not for the faint of heart. It means that you have to be willing to hear feedback. You know, sometimes that might be difficult feedback about your behavior. You have to be willing to change your behavior. These are hard things to do. It requires, you know, internal work on your mindset, external work in how you interact with others. But the rewards, the rewards are enormous. Let me give you some additional scenarios when CEO coaching could be especially pertinent. If you're a first-time CEO, it could be a good time to think about an executive coach. If you are working with your leadership team, you're building that team or you have a team and they're not working well together. In our experience, most senior leadership teams are not highly functioning teams. And yet, you know, the research shows that if you have a senior team that's highly functioning, they tend to outperform their competitors. So it's that important. A few other times to think about CEO coaching would be if your company is, you know, going through a layoff or you're trying to manage the aftermath of a layoff and, you know, reinvigorate the teamwork and sense of purpose for your company, if you're going through rapid hiring and you wanna maintain the culture of your company. Any existential threat or opportunity will require more versatile leadership skills from you. The right time to work with a coach is also dependent on your being willing to make the time. So how much time will it take? Once you pick a coach, it'll take a few hours to set up the program and get aligned with your coach on what you're gonna work on. And then it's an hour a week, or more typically, an hour every other week. So my point is, it's not that much time. "I'm too busy" is, you know, not a credible excuse. Also saying, you know, that "at this stage, I'm an early stage entrepreneur, and at this stage in my company, you know, it feels too self-indulgent or self-centered to have an executive coach, maybe I'll do it later when we're further along," that also is not credible to me. You know, remember we talked about this earlier, that if you are being coached, if you are working, you're engaged with a coach and you're doing the work, not only will you benefit, but your employees will benefit as well, right? Their job satisfaction will go up. Their retention will improve, teamwork will improve. So if you decide to do this, it's not just for you, it's also for your team and for the benefit of your company. In today's world, the cost also shouldn't be a barrier. We've found that investors and boards are very supportive of CEO coaching and more broadly executive coaching because they know it works. The cost can vary quite a bit. Six-month programs might run between 10 to 20k depending on how it's structured. And boards see that as a worthwhile investment. You are already successful if you're watching this video. How will you maximize your company's chances for success? And how will you personally grow your own capabilities to be even more successful? I'm Andre Neumann-Loreck. Look me up. Call me, text me if you have questions, or if you'd like to talk further.
Perfect. Thank you very much. And this has been our session on, When Does CEO Coaching Makes Sense? Thank you again, Andre, for this and for being part of the Extended Team. Look forward to seeing you in a future session.
My pleasure. Thank you.